Proceedings - Translation Concepts

MuTra 2006 – Audiovisual Translation Scenarios: Conference Proceedings
Sara Ramos Pinto
detached linguistic characteristics, i.e. features that speakers use more consciously. Also,
people are, normally, more conscious of open classes (namely lexis) than of closed classes
(grammatical structures, sound systems). This can also be an indication of an awareness for
dealing with an audiovisual product. By presenting a graphically less marked subtitle, the
audience is expected to note linguistic differences from visual and audible output (e.g. Eliza’s
clothing). Public subtitling shows to be aware of the fact that graphic features make subtitling
attract the viewer’s attention.
Another extra-textual factor appears to be very important to a TV channel, i.e. that
legibility matters to the public. The audiovisual text addresses a very diverse audience with
with different cultural sensitivities, degrees and reading skills. Hence subtitling which
constantly presents graphic features, might not be easily readable to everyone, especially to
the younger (10-15) and older (55-80) population, who are the target audience of a film
broadcasted at 2 p.m. like Pygmalion and My Fair Lady.
This does not apply to the remaining translations, which seem to portray a movement
from right to left, denoting strategies which contradict the growing trends for standardization
and the translation universal of normalization. The choice for sub-standard discourse may be
interpreted to be an effort for achieving adequacy in oral register of the source text as well as
adequacy of the target cultural oral discourse of theater translations.
In private channel subtitling we can identify the use of what is called “eye-dialect”- the
orthography is altered so that it can be closer to the oral register of the source text, implying a
higher acceptability by the audience. In the case of subtitling, where the source and target
texts appear simultaneously, the translators may not escape the fact that someone or today
even the majority of viewers understand the source language, thus facing up the risk of what
Gottlieb called “feedback effect” (Gottlieb 1994: 105). Although the inclusion of oral or substandard
features in writing can be interpreted as bad translations (Lefevere 1992: 70), the
contrary may today be equally valid – an audience who understands the source text is
normally very critical of subtitles which do not represents the specific discourse
characteristics of the original. It can therefore be concluded that this may be an attempt to
produce an accurate and adequate translation of what is found in the source text. This
tendency is more pronounced in public TV than in private channels which may indicate that
subtitles aired by a private TV channel may be less motivated to uphold the standard.
The translations commercialized by DVD confirms Schröter’s (2003: 110) conclusions
that DVD subtitles are less condensed than those presented on TV, i.e., subtitles on DVD
follow the order and content of the original more closely, and consequently the translation
can be rendered much faster. Presenting a more normalized text seems to contradict the
difference between private and public companies as far as translation strategies are
concerned. However, the fact that the translator's native language was not Portuguese might
lead us to conclude that the translator’s poor linguistic knowledge might be reasonable for the
extra-linguistic factor determining discourse normalization.
Since choices between using standard or sub-standard discourse need to be made in both
media, we may conclude that the medium is not a relevant variable; nonetheless, there is a
difference between the two media in the kind of features - as well as in the rate of their
recurrence - that are used to distinguish the discourse as sub-standard.
Taking into account all cases were grapho-phonetic features are used to differentiate the
discourse as sub-standard shows certain regularities as specific of each medium. In the case
of subtitling the apostrophe indicating the fall of a vowel is the primary grapho-phonetic
feature used, which confirms that the translator is well aware not only of the strange effect
that this kind of feature will have but also of the fact that it will influence the rates of
legibility. On the other hand, theater translations use other additonal kinds of grapho-phonetic
features like the change of the vowel quality, monothongization, metathesis, nasalization of
the vowel at the beginning of the word, etc (Fig. 2).
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